Couple drops lawsuit against Instagram parent over daughter’s sex assault

kind is unacceptable on our platform — and we routinely work with safety experts and law enforcement to help combat it. Snapchat is a visual messaging app designed for communication between real friends, and we intentionally make it very difficult for strangers to find and communicate with minors.”

Lawyers for Snapchat planned to ask a judge Monday to dismiss the lawsuit against the social media site. Among their claims is that the lawsuit is barred by Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which generally provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by its users.

The lawsuit claims Snap specifically targets children and teenagers with its programming and allows them to be exploited.

“For years Snap has received reports of child abuse and bullying occurring through its product and because of its product features yet has kept those features in place,” the lawsuit states.

The suit seeks unspecified damages from Snap Inc. as well as the two convicted rapists, one a former New Haven police officer.

In July 2019, the then 12year-old victim, whose name is being withheld, was contacted by a man on Snapchat, according to police.

They said the man later turned out to be convicted sex offender Reginald Sharp.

Police said Sharp, although being told the girl was only 12, convinced her to send him nude photographs of herself. But once she did so he threatened to post those photos on social media unless she agreed to meet him, police said.

The girl sneaked out of her home that night and met Sharp outside her parent’s apartment complex, police said. They said Sharp then led her to a grassy area where he had spread a blanket and then repeatedly raped her.

Police later showed the girl a photo lineup and she picked out Sharp’s photograph.

In

Sharp,

December 2019, pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual assault, risk of injury to a child, enticing a minor and violation of parole and was sentenced to 20 years in prison followed by 20 years of special parole.

“It was a parent’s worst nightmare; a repeat sex offender raped my baby girl. It killed my soul that I couldn’t protect her from this monster. For some time, she wouldn’t dress as a girl because she was worried someone would attack her because she looked pretty,” the girl’s mother told the sentencing judge.

In October 2021, the girl’s mother reported to a resource officer at Stratford High School that her daughter had been sexually assaulted by an older man.

Police said the mother told them she had been going through her daughter’s cellphone when she saw a number of sexually explicit texts from a person who identified himself as “Jonathan Eddy.”

Police said Jonathan Eddy was subsequently identified as Edward “Eddie” Rodriguez, a former New Haven police officer who was on probation for sexually assaulting a teenaged girl in West Haven.

Police said the victim told them she had initially contacted Rodriguez on Snapchat and, while she didn’t know how old he was, she agreed to meet him before school. The victim met Rodriguez in a parking lot near the Stratford Library and agreed to get into his car.

Once in the car, police said Rodriguez sexually assaulted the victim. He then drove her to school.

Police said the victim subsequently identified Rodriguez as the man who assaulted her from a police photo array.

Rodriguez pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault, illegal sexual contact and violating his prior probation and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2023.

The lawsuit describes the victim as once being a “happy and outgoing child who always enjoyed school and spending time with her family and friends.”

At 10 years old her parents gave her an iPad which the suit states that hoped she would use to play games, watch childappropriate videos and educational purposes only.But at 12, the suit states that the girl opened her first Facebook and Snapchat accounts.

Shortly after doing so the suit states that the girl began struggling in school and her personality changed. Other children had begun bullying the girl through group chats and direct messaging features. Then the platforms exposed her to predators, the suit states.

The lawsuit states that the girl’s parents attempted to cut her off from using the platform accounts but she was able to open new accounts they were not aware of and accessed these accounts on other media.

In December 2018, the girl attempted suicide, the suit states, “in hopes of finding some escape.”

When her family discovered the truth behind her suicide attempt they attempted to report the exploitation to police, the suit states but police told them “that Meta’s Instagram product was designed in such a way that they could not identify who was behind the Instagram account that was used to abuse her, and a case was never opened,” the lawsuit states.